2 June 2017 –
United Nations agencies are calling for
urgent aid to help hundreds of thousands of people affected by Cyclone Mora,
which swept across the Bay of Bengal earlier this week.
Refugees in
Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh rebuild
their homes after Cyclone Mora tore
through the area.
Photo: UNHCR/Shinji Kubo
“There is an urgent need for shelter materials,” the
spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),
Andrej Mahecic, told journalists in Geneva.
“Food rations, drinking water and latrines are some of
the other needs identified so far in the cyclone-affected areas,” Mr. Mahecic
said, adding that more needs are likely to be identified as governments in
Bangladesh and Myanmar complete their ongoing assessments of the damage.
The Rohingya community displaced in Myanmar and living in
settlements in Bangladesh has been particularly hard hit. In Bangladesh, there
are more than 33,000 Rohingya refugees registered in the official camps of
Kutupalong and Nayapara. Outside the camps, more than 200,000 undocumented
Rohingya are living in makeshift sites and local villages in the south-eastern
part of the country.
In Myanmar, some 120,500 internally displaced people have
been living in central Rakhine since 2012, when inter-communal violence forced
them to flee, according to UNHCR.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) today
launched an appeal for $3.7 million to help the Rohingya in Bangladesh. The
funds aim to help up to 80,000 people between now and the end of the year, and
“will target health, water, sanitation, shelter and protection.”
The cyclone, which pounded Bangladesh with 117 km/hour
winds and heavy train, tore through the settlement houses which offered little
resistance to the storm’s strength.
“The storm destroyed25 per cent of shelters and left as
many as 80 per cent damaged,” IOM said. “Food and fuel supplies were destroyed,
electricity lines were cut, and health and sanitation infrastructure was also
badly damaged.”
Some 1.3 million children are estimated to be in urgent
need of aid as a result of the storm.
The Director of Emergency Programmes at the UN Children’s
Fund (UNICEF), Manuel Fontaine, warned that children from the Rohingya
community, who were already displaced and living in precarious conditions
before the Cyclone, is now “hit by double humanitarian crisis.”